How to Talk to a Widower

turn around, to see her start yelling at him, and then they’re swallowed up by the crowd.

    It’s amazing, really, how fast a wedding is over. With all the anticipation and planning that precedes it, all the tension and excitement, you kind of expect it to last a week instead of six hours. We dance, we eat, and we dance some more. Mike makes a nice little speech about Debbie, and Max brings the house down with a drunken, borderline pornographic toast that ends on a surprisingly emotional note. I sneak a few Vil Pills from my mother’s clutch, strictly for medicinal purposes, and then Rudy, all decked out for the occasion in a dark blue tuxedo, takes a break from standing vigil over my father to change my bandages in a bathroom stall. My mother gets hammered, sings a few showstoppers with the band, and seems prepared to stay up there doing encores all night until Claire talks her down, and then we’re eating dessert as the crowd begins to thin. Debbie and Mike make their farewells, hugging and kissing everyone in arm’s reach, pocketing envelopes discreetly, and then they’re off to their hotel. They’ll leave for Antigua in the morning. Then the band plays “The Wee Small Hours” and it’s just my parents, dancing alone to Sinatra, cheek to cheek in the center of the dance floor, while the caterers clean up and Russ, Claire, and I eat miniature chocolate truffle cakes with our fingers. Stephen is off to the side, trapped in a typically endless conversation with Uncle Freddy that will last until one of us gets off our ass to rescue him.
    “Shit,” Claire says. “I think I lost an earring in the limo.”
    “What were you doing in the limo? Oh. Oh!”
    “I know,” she says, shaking her head incredulously. “He knows I’ve got a thing about him in a monkey suit.”
    “Well, if it means anything, I like him a lot more than I used to.”
    “Thanks,” she says. “It doesn’t.” She leans her head on my shoulder, squeezing the fleshy part of my hand between her thumb and forefinger.
    “How does it feel to see him?” I say.
    “I don’t know. I’m too hormonally fucked to be sure of anything.”
    “It’s okay to be unsure.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I’m serious. Maybe the thing is to just take it slow,” I say. “Feel your way.”
    “I’m not exactly famous for my even keel,” Claire says.
    I lick some chocolate frosting off my finger. “People can change,” I say.

    Claire decides to come home with Russ and me, but arranges to meet Stephen for lunch tomorrow. Out in the parking lot, it’s gotten chilly, and the steam comes off our warm bodies as we say our good-byes. My mother hugs me and presses her forehead against mine. “It’s good that you came,” she says.
    “I’m glad I did.”
    “Are you going to be okay?”
    “Yeah. A few days, and I’ll be good as new.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” she says.
    “I know, Mom. I’ll be fine.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.”
    She gives Russ a peck on the cheek. “You take care of my boy, you hear me?”
    “You got it, Mrs. Parker.”
    “For God’s sake, I think you can call me Eva by now.”
    “Okay, Eva.”
    My father looks tired, but happy. “Some party, huh?” he says.
    “It was a blast,” I say, stepping into his perfect hug.
    “You give Hailey my best,” he says, patting my back.
    I hold on to him for an extra few seconds and then say, “I will, Dad.”
    Rudy takes the wheel, and my parents climb into the backseat of the Audi. My mother rests her head on my father’s shoulder, and as they pull away, I see his tuxedo-clad arm emerge from the window, palm down, fingers spread to ride the wind as the car picks up speed and heads down the road, disappearing into the surrounding trees.

41

    I HAD A WIFE. HER NAME WAS HAILEY. NOW SHE’S GONE.
And so am I
.
    A few weeks after Debbie’s wedding, on a soggy gray Monday, I sit down at my computer and type those words onto a blank screen. Kyle has negotiated a deal with a major house and, after a few days of soul-searching, I’ve decided that it’s time I got back to work. I have no outline, no guide other than the four-page proposal Kyle wrote and signed my name to, and the twelve columns I wrote for
M
that were the basis of the deal. A few days ago, I sat in a conference room high above the city while Perry Manfield, the acquiring editor, brandished a rolled folio of my columns and called the by-product of my ruined life “great stuff.”
    I won’t exactly be